


this city is gonna eat you alive

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Noir, Anachronistic Dialogue, Canonical Character Death, Corruption, Danger, Detective Noir, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know why I wrote this, Los Angeles, Older Man/Younger Woman, Partnership, Private Investigators, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Ward is a duplicitous lowlife here too, more James Ellroy than noir but, orphan and ex cop team up, the city is the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1952 and corruption thrives in Los Angeles in the sweltering heat. Skye and Coulson might be the city's least expensive private detectives but they are also the ones with a chance to clean this mess up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this city is gonna eat you alive

**Author's Note:**

> written for Skye Week Day 6 - an AU of your choosing.
> 
> based on this [wonderful gifset](http://fuckyeahskoulson.tumblr.com/post/89479091055/skye-week-an-au-of-your-choosing-noir-au-with).
> 
> now with [its own soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/becketted/this-city-is-gonna-eat-you-alive)!

**part one: an unpleasant tendency towards abrupt transitions**

 

This city birthed her, this city breastfed her, this city cut her lose at thirteen and there she went, jumping into the trolley up Wilshire to Jefferson and La Brea, following Friday crowds, living on her wits before she had any. The city smells of unspeakable lust and failed ambition and the girl walks through it as if the shit couldn't touch her. The city is a warning – _get the hell out of here, kid_. But she's not one for ever listening to other people's advice, just her own. It's safer that way. She changes her Catholic school uniform for a journalist's skirt and shirt and then she changes the paper's offices for a crumbling private dick joint with an ex-cop.

The rest is history.

Except in this town nothing really is.

 

**[x]**

He gets his meager pitiful pension for his injuries, after a shot to the chest almost lands him in the morgue, and he walks away. It's fitting. The man who shot him walked away too.

They say the bullet barely missed his heart.

He thinks it didn't miss at all.

He could try becoming a drunk like so many men of his generation. He tries a vacation outside the state instead; but LA clings to him like cold sweat to his skin, like a bad night's sleep, like a conscience.

He comes back, he meets a girl who doesn't like cops ("they hurt people"), he applies for a PI license. To do good sometimes you have to take the long way around. To do good sometimes you have to shack up with an ex-newshawk, with an orphaned girl with heroic delusions, for twenty-five dollars the hour when they are on a case, for nothing the rest of the time, scraps and an open tab in Mel's Diner around the corner.

People used to know him as a quiet man, and all of the sudden he's gotten noisy.

 

**[x]**

If nobody knows exactly how they came to work together it's only because like most legends in this city people are only allowed one piece of the information each. They are such a staple in Downtown that nobody questions their origins, or the fact that it feels like they have been here forever.

The truth is they have only been partners for less than a year.

The part of the legend that matters is this: when she still worked at her limited print run newspaper Skye wrote more words than she should have about police brutality and police corruption and she made a lot of enemies among the LAPD. Phil Coulson wasn't one of those enemies.

The part that matters is this: Skye has a copy of her parents' murder report, a carbon copy full of obvious lies. When she showed it to Coulson he promised to help her find the original. He hadn't made a promise to anyone in a long time.

 

**[x]**

There are things the legend doesn't tell you, details ommitted from the pulp magazine text of their association.

"You must spend a fortune on ironing those, Phil," Skye says on their first week of work, taking in the ridiculous stubborness of his suit, as if he were still in a police gala night, trying to impress the DA with his tidiness, trying to impress the DA's wife.

"I'd rather you didn't call me Phil."

"Whatever you want, angel."

 

**[x]**

It's 1952 and it starts, as it is always the case (but never really that simple) with a woman crossing the door that says, rather grandly for the look of the operation, DETECTIVE AGENCY.

It's 1952 and no one quite knows how the two of them came to partner up but everybody knows that together they have a solved cases percentage higher than what they charge you for it would might imply. Everybody knows about the flat upstairs, everybody knows it's not like that, everybody knows she doesn't have a family name and he doesn't have a penny to his.

"I know him," the client says, looking at Coulson. "But they tell me you are the boss."

"We're both the boss," Skye clears it up because everybody always asks, gesturing for the woman to sit. "But he makes the coffee."

They exchange a look. Skye tips herself back in the chair, a move learned in the movies like everything else.

"Haven't seen you around town in a couple of years, Akela," Coulson comments. Isn't it always the case? Those who leave Los Angeles eventually come back or they are dead. Akela is back in town, alive but not quite well. She looks like she hasn't slept in two years.

Most stories start with one word, and this does too: "Blackmail."

 

**[x]**

In the autumn of 1947 they were doing the Wilshire beat, he and Akela. She was the best boxer of her weight and on Fridays the top brass gambled fortunes away on amateur matches between young patrolmen and patrolwomen and Akela was a safe bet, it won her alliances, and it won Coulson alliances, being her partner. Coulson never liked the practice, the sport not quite clandestine, but stinking of illicit anyway Coulson didn't like all this other life you were supposed to lead if you wanted the life of a cop. He did his job and that was it. He thought she agreed with him.

It was only after he was no longer her partner that they recruited Akela for the special forces within the force. Though nothing was on record everybody knew it existed, Wilshire's own urban legends about hired fists who hide their tins when they come knocking at your door. The public loved them in print. Avenging angels, here to guard the good men and women of the city, no matter how violent the methods.

She was given the names and adresses of the targets and Akela's strength did the rest. Among the gangsters they were known simply as death squads – a boogeyman story for wise guys who started looking over their shoulders for that car with the lights off following them all the way to Mulholland.

It's only years after that Akela finds out most of those target had nothing to do with the mob.

It's only years after that she realizes she wasn't eliminating Quinn's minions. She was eliminating Quinn's enemies (and that sometimes included the innocent, the unlucky, the righteous). 

They tell her to lay low. This is not blackmail, Skye reasons. Someone wants to know if, when the time comes, Akela would be willing to sing. And if she was... Well, that's why they tell her to lie low. Coulson feels the old uneasiness in his stomach, from back when Akela was twenty and under his supervision.

"I had heard stuff like that back when I was in the paper," Skye tells him afterwards, "but you guys always manage to surpass my expectations."

Bitterness doesn't sound good in her voice. _I don't trust cops_ was one of the first things she ever said to him. She had her reasons. Coulson understood this very well. Everybody has their reasons, hers are just better than most.

"How did they manage to keep it a secret?" he wonders. He still knew Akela when she was beating up alleged villains and he never suspected a thing.

"This Special Force to deal with the mob... Were you ever approached to join?" Skye asks, looking scared of the answer. He has never seen her scared before. He didn't think it was possible. He had imagined that against all proof Skye actually comes from an old tradition of entertaiment people who specialize in putting their heads in inside the jaws of lions and tigers. That's the image he has of Skye.

"Never," he replies, baffled at his own ignorance. "I would have..."

"Told someone?" She sounds skeptical. Coulson has told her about his track record, clean but compromised.

"I don't know," he admits. "I like to think I would have."

In LA you are either a bad man deluded enough to think yourself a good man, or you are a good man who doesn't know he is one. There is no third option.

 

**[x]**

No one has ever discovered who shot Coulson.

No one has ever discovered who killed Skye's parents.

This hardly ever makes it into the legend of them.

 

**[x]**

Things are worse now than they were in the spring.

Now the orange groves are in bloom and the real state business is in a boom and that attracts crime. Money calls to blood calls to money. Power always leave a vacuum, in this city more than most, and Ian Quinn being sent up to Folsom courtesy of Lieutenant Garrett and Wilshire's golden boy Sergeant Grant Ward does nothing to alleviate Los Angeles' many malaises. 

City Hall elections loom in the horizon and Wilshire Station is under scrutiny.

"Do you ever miss your old precinct?" Skye asks. Skye asks an ex-cop with a humble private eye license, the very definition of a pariah, a wash out.

"I miss the people."

Not entirely true but true enough that some fools call him _nostalgic_. He doesn't ever misses the methods. He doesn't miss the deaths in custody or the altered copies of arrest reports for which you could never find the original. He doesn't miss the Christmas parties where everybody got way too drunk and everybody always decided to harass the prisoners in the cells like they were the first ones to have that idea.

 

 

**[x]**

The city is imploding. 

On his campaign for mayor Alexander Pierce promises a clean-up job. What he intends to clean no one is quite sure.

All of the sudden all the good men and women in this place seem to disappear.

Rogers has bolted town, on rumors of antipatriotism and sedition. Rumors of being caught dealing with a Russian dame, an alledged spy for the Soviets.

"An aggresive campaign of disinformation," Coulson says, reading the headlines and reading between the lines. Skye watches him pace the office, personally affronted by it all. Rogers is a hero of his, even though their professional paths hadn't crossed as often as Coulson would have wanted – he used to go watch him play ball when he was still a pro, before joining the force. "I know the Russian girl they talk about. And _she is_ a spy. For the Americans."

"If I were still a journalist I'd have such juicy stuff to print," she says.

Coulson tilts his head, giving him a smile one can only categorize as _playful_.

"If you were still a journalist I wouldn't be telling you this."

 

**[x]**

You can't win an election with a scandal about half your squad moonlightning as vigilantes in the wings. Everybody knows that. Alexander Pierce knows that. In his meteoric career towards the Capitol this win in LA is key. 

That's why Skye unearths two hundred dollars by any means possible and pushes them into Akela's fist, driving her to the bus station. After taking her sworn statement in front of the notary, just in case, or just for leverage.

"Get out of town," she says. "Look out for yourself."

Akela looks at the money in her hand. Skye knows she feels tempted to stay and fight the good fight – she can see in her the same things she sees in Coulson every day: a desire to make things right. He taught her well, ultimately.

"We've got this," Skye tries to reassure her. What they've got she has no idea, or how they will manage to protect it. But that seems to be enough for Akela, who can't wait to get out of town.

"What happened to Coulson?" she asks. Skye gives her a questioning look. "He's not the man I remember. The cop I remember."

"Well, I haven't known him for that long, but he did get shot in the heart. That does things to a person."

"I guess it's that," Akela mutters, perfectly unconvinced, before boarding the coach to San Francisco.

 

**[x]**

Follow the money is the only advice you'll ever need, if you want to find out anything in this town. If you want to find your lost puppy or your cheating husband, it doesn't matter. Follow the sweet, green music of dollar bills.

"Who's the doll?" Skye inquires looking at the picture in the file, big eyes and impossible hair, classy if Skye ever saw class. One of those dames that could lead you straight to hell and you'd be only to happy to go.

"Her name is Raina," Coulson explains. "She's the courier. She's been passing bribes from hand to hand."

"From hand to _cop_ hand?"

Coulson lets out a dismayed yet unsurprised sigh. She knows he still thinks of himself as a cop, and all of the evils caused by cops his intimate responsibility. "Yeah."

 

**[x]**

_You know, pal, the thing about that girl Skye..._

Everyone thinks they are the first to warn him about that girl.

Many have tried before: the girl is bad news (which girl in this town isn't?); wherever the girl goes death follows (but Coulson has cheated death before); you're gonna get the girl killed (this last one is almost effective). In this town every woman comes with a warning of some kind or other. _Living together? That was just asking for trouble_ and that was the last conversation he had with Commissioner Fury.

There are the rumors: she's got a record, her license is fake, she's secretly married to a cowboy in Texas, her parents were criminals, her parents were _murderers_. Coulson has heard them all and mostly he thinks they lack imagination; he could tell her stories about Skye much wilder than those – and they'd be true, for a change.

It's such a good thing to have friends in this town, Coulson reflects, hiding his eyes under the wing of his hat, listening to Chief Hill give him the exact same advice everybody has given him before. But hey, he should be grateful for friends, shouldn't he.

"The girl is a famous communist, Coulson," Maria tells him, like it's fresh news, like everybody who is anybody (and quite a bunch of nobodies) didn't already know that. 

Like Coulson would care.

"She's a socialist," he corrects his former boss. "It's different."

"A grand jury won't see the difference."

He can tell she is not messing around. Maria Hill's serious stare has put the fear of God in better men than Coulson. 

"So that's where things are heading in this country," he realizes. Things have been heading to this for a couple of years, he just didn't want to see. "Are we putting people like her on the stand now? She's alone in the whole world. She couldn't influence a fly."

"That's where things are headed in this country."

Something inside him twists at the prospect. He knows Fury, lost to the West Coast, is in Washington doing the devil knows what right now, and he knows he has kept in contact with Hill so she should know better than anyone what's going on. Better than anyone if a storm is coming. Coulson decides he'd better invest in a proper raincoat, not the flimsy, thin excuse he is wearing now.

"Look," she tells him, friendly but firm. "I don't know what this is, a sense of responsibility, some misguided sense of protection. Maybe you see this girl as a daughter." Coulson snorts. "What?"

"Sure, if that's what you and all our old colleagues in the precint need to believe, please be my guest. Tell them I'm doing all this because the girl is like a daughter to me. And by the way _the girl_ has a name."

"I know her name. I don't want to repeat it because I'm training myself not to say it out loud for when they come to interrogate me."

Coulson smiles a bit. "You're one of the good guys, Hill."

She huffs. Sometimes it's hard for him not to see her as the fresh-faced recruit he met for the first time, spotless uniform and frown of concentration on her too-young face, cutting her teeth on the bottom barrel cases no one else wanted, it was months before anyone in the station called her anything other than _rookie_.

Maria Hill gives him one last look before deciding her advice is probably wasted on him.

"And you're a punk, Phil."

 

**[x]**

They find her in one of the clubs on Central Avenue, beyond the reach and the knowledge of most white Angelenos. 

The name is Upbeat. Hot and crowded and somehow someone is always playing "Salt Peanuts", Coulson and Skye make their way through the sea of Saturday afternoon bodies to the bar. The glossy waves of Raina's hair curl around her face when she turns around a spots the two detectives, her smile big and dangerous. She's surrounded by cocktail debris: olives, ice, she's fidgeting with the maraschino cherries. 

"Detectives," she greets and loses no time inviting them to a drink. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

She is wearing the most marvelous purple dress, with tiny little California poppies sewn into you.

Skye shows her pictures of LAPD officers sleeping envelopes into her hands.

Skye shows her a picture of a man fished out of a water reservoir near San Fernando.

"Please, detectives," Raina says, hand on her chest in mock hurt. Her tone is mocking all the way through. "That's Mr Po. He's a notorious criminal, associated with the likes of Ian Quinn. I'm a simple businesswoman. Do I look like criminal and a murderer?"

"You look _exactly_ like a criminal and a murderer," Skye barks at her face.

Coulson grabs her arm gently. " _Skye_."

"What a wonderful temper," Raina says. "Who do you get your gift from? Your mother or your father? Surely it must be in the _bloodline_."

Coulson tries to put himself between the two women. "We could nail you just for the bribes alone. And whoever is paying you the money won't be too happy with the outcome, I'm sure."

"They are not bribes. I'm just a big fan of police work. I think you guys should be rewarded for your hard work," she says that last part moving into Coulson's space, giving him an unmistakeable heated look.

Skye wonders if Coulson could charm his way into some information. That is sometimes his role in the agency. He's smooth, smoother that she could ever be. He flashes that gentleman's smile, those Henry Fonda manners, that ex-cop's whiff of integrity and there are few who can resist. It comes in handy. And it is always funny to see women richer and classier than Coulson fawning over him, not the least because afterwards Skye gets to tease him about it. But somehow Skye suspects Raina is made of sterner stuff. No one quite knows what Raina is made of.

"I followed the paper trail," Skye says in a challenging voice. Something about the other woman. It makes her skin itch like a premonition. "You buried the deeds to the building pretty well, I'll say this about you. This club is actually owned by one Ian Quinn."

"Mr Quinn is an old friend."

"I'm confused," now it's Coulson's turn to step in her space. "Because a minute ago you said he was a criminal."

She shrugs, lying with those beautiful shoulder the low-cut dress leaves bare.

"I only know him as a friend," she says. "I can't be blamed for not knowing what else Mr Quinn is up to. That's not a crime. Or is it?"

"It doesn't matter how dirty you think you are, Raina," Coulson warns her. "Don't get mixed up with dirty cops. They are never the ones to pay the price."

When they leave the club – and they can't believe it's still the daylight, even if it's just the last traces of it, their eyes hurt, after the dimmed atmosphere of the joint – Skye stops on her tracks. 

"Did you hear what she said? About my parents?"

"They must know you are looking to find the truth. It's not that difficult to find out. Skye. Don't let her push your buttons."

 

 

**part two: good day to be a rat**

 

The shooting at Griffth Park.

This autumn is shaping up to be a delight.

They get wind of it earlier than they should, a uniform coming personally to tell Coulson, a certain degree of protocol.

"One of the victims has been ID'd." A pause. "Victoria Hand."

 

**[x]**

This morning, before taking a cab here, Skye asked him if he had liked Hand. He told her the truth: she was a good cop and a good boss, even if she was too strict at times and too compromising at others. Skye asked him if she was an honest cop, a combination of words nobody but Skye uses these days, in all her naivete she managed to put the finger on it. Yes, Coulson told her, Victoria Hand had been an honest cop. Honest enough to get killed for it.

"You look good, Phil," Lieutenant Garrett says, standing in the heat of the Evergreen Cemetery with Coulson. "Pity we have to meet under these circumstances."

Coulson feels like he is too old and he has too little to lose to be pulling punches, even with old friends and colleagues. He has Skye by her side, even if she hasn't said a word during the whole funeral. Skye will probably approve of his lack of patience.

"The circumstances would have been better if the whole investigation wasn't such a joke. Have you read the report? Unfortunate bystander to an unrelated crime? When in her whole life has Victoria Hand been an innocent bystander? She'd be furious at the mere suggestion, she'd probably shoot us both just for enteratining the idea."

"Vic is gone. Nothing is going to bring her back."

"She is gone. And we are here. And that has to mean something. It means we have a responsibility towards her."

"Oh, Phil, what the devil happened to you this past year? You never used to poke the bear like this. Is this a shamus thing? You become a private eye and suddenly you can't tell you elbow from your ass?"

"John..."

"And how exactly did _you_ even get your hands on that report?"

His eyes dart to Skye, as if he could smell it on her. She looks away. Coulson knows she is not about to betray how she came into a copy of the keys for Wilshire's archive room. The stories are true, he can corroborate first hand: once a Derrick, once a clout, you never really stop thinking with your hands and fingers first, fidgety against everything that could be lifted. That's Skye and it does come in handy more times that he is willing to admit.

"So you are the other private eye? _The girl_?" Garrett says, smirking in a crooked way. "My boy Ward has told me a lot about you."

Skye frowns. 

"Your fans await, John," Coulson gestures towards the iron gates of the cemetery, a flock of newshawks trying to take a peek into the scene.

He sees the exact moment Garrett's unnerving smile becomes a benign (and thus equally sinister) grin for the cameras. Garrett is slanted to be Maria Hill's contender for Chief next year so he has to stay in the good graces of the press people.

"I like your pals," Skye says, once Garrett is gone.

Coulson shakes his head, trying to gather his thoughts.

If they don't find a way in they are not going to get anywhere. And he is afraid he's burnt too many bridges with the LAPD as it is.

"Do you know Sergeant Grant Ward well?" he asks Skye.

"Not well," she tells him, a bit wrong-footed by the question. "He's an informant. He's... I don't know, tall, Hollywood handsome, well-bred, his family is loaded. He's a decent sort, from what we've talked. Doesn't take much to convince him to let me see prisoner's lists, that type of thing."

"An easy mark?"

"Please, Coulson. For me – who isn't, really?"

"Can we trust him?" he asks.

"I think so. Why?"

He scratches the side of his neck, the heat doesn't ever respected the dead.

"Because we sure as hell can't trust John Garrett," he says.

 

**[x]**

They are walking down the cemetery hill, hoping to catch a cab at some point. All the other mourners (policemen in gala or upper floor journalists) had brought their own cars. Skye wonders if they should buy a car. She doesn't have a license but she can drive, of course.

"I was thinking..." Coulson starts, jacket casually drapped over his shoulder and shirt clinging to his body.

"Yes?"

"Am I Hollywood handsome?" he asks her.

She rolls hers eyes, smiling. "You're my very own Gary Cooper."

 

**[x]**

They have a priority here - the murder. Any sign that they haven't gone completely crazy.

"I can talk to Ward," she says. "If they manipulated the coroner's maybe he knows how I can get my hands on the real one."

"Okay, okay. But be careful. I don't want you anywhere near the precint."

"I'll tell him to meet me downtown. I'll play it safe."

 

**[x]**

People think it never rains in LA.

Like fuck it doesn't.

She comes back with her hair wet, bruises on her face, roughed up, a good shiner. Her clothes are damp, the blood on the collar of her shirt dissolving into the threads with the water. It has been raining for days, like an augury. She stumbles onto the door. Coulson wonders how the hell she managed to make it to the office.

"Who did this?"

"Quinn's boys."

"Quinn is no longer a player."

"Oh isn't he? Tell that to the one who dislocated my finger."

He can hear the pain in her voice. Skye is three quarters bravado but even with Skye he had never seen it this bad; he has never seen her get hurt like this. If he is terrified – and he is – he can only imagine what Skye must be feeling.

"Okay. Come here."

He makes her lean on the desk. He doesn't want her sitting down just yet, not before he can asses the damage. He does the finger first and fast, Skye shivering and turning her face away from him without a single sound of protest. He doesn't want to know about the rest.

"They focused on my face," she offers. "A couple of kicks in the ribs."

"Broken?"

"No. But it'll leave an ugly bruise."

"Are you sure nothing is broken?" he asks, a little too forcefully.

"Believe me, Coulson, I know what a broken bone feels like."

He takes some cotton balls and some alcohol from the bathroom upstairs. This is not the first time any of them has got hurt – this is L.A. This is _what they do_. Coulson cannot quite understand the bitter, panicked taste at the back of his throat as he runs back to the office, two steps at a time.

He already has his hands on the cut below her left eye. His hands are steady. He's good at this – military training he has never forgotten. He rubs too much alcohol on the wound but Skye makes an effort not to wince, as if she is going to annoy him somehow. This is not the first or the last time he wonders what kind of life she led before meeting him. He has some sparse details, but he would need so much more.

He waits for her to catch her breath before the interrogation starts.

"I thought you were going to talk to Ward."

He watches her lick the edge of her swollen lip. "Who do you think sent Quinn's dogs after me?"

He stops what he is doing. That makes no sense. Ward is a notoriously stand up guy, Garrett's affection for him notwithstanding. Hill is taking him under her wing, grooming him to be the youngest lieutenant in the station.

"Ward did this to you?"

Skye nods. "Not personally. He just kicked back and watch the boys work me. They wanted to know exactly what _we_ knew. I don't know what we know so, all the luck to them, maybe they can explain it to me."

"Are you okay?" he asks, caressing her cheek. He's not just asking about her injuries.

"Doesn't the black eye look good on me?"

He sighs. Sometimes he resents the way nothing fazes Skye. It'd be a lot less frightening if she were just as spooked as he is right now. What is she doing holding her detective tin up for anyone to see but be target of ridicule and violence? What _is she_ doing? He'd feel a lot saner if just for once he heard her say This, this is where I draw the line.

 

**[x]**

They sit on the couch. He gives her a glass of scotch and a couple of pills for the pain.

"So if Ward is working with Garrett that means..."

"The whole report about Hand's murder is horseshit."

"Yes, and Mister Peterson is the fall guy."

"Why call it the fall guy when he's clearly being _pushed_."

 Coulson nods. He looks as uncomfortable about the perspective of an innocent guy paying the prize as she feels. That's the thing about Coulson, she guesses.

"Cops really do stink," she says.

He's not diagreeing. "And the ones who doesn't get bumped off."

"Coulson. I'm really glad that bullet to your heart put you out of circulation. If you had stayed in the force you'd be dead by now."

"That's a lot of faith on me."

It takes a lot of faith to do what we do, Skye thinks. She's glad she found a shining example of humanity, even if Coulson doesn't believe he is one.

"Is there anyone we can trust?" she asks, because she's actually scared shitless, even if she is sure he can't tell.

"In Alexander Pierce's city? _No one_." He shakes his head. Then something in her eyes seems to stop him. He touches her knee lightly. "Each other."

 

**[x]**

"Do you want to get out of the city, boss?" Coulson asks, looking outside the window. The midday sun making the city a little uglier, a little dirtier, a lot less new.

They have been holed up for days, waiting until Skye's wounds heal enough.

"And where will we go?" she asks.

He's pretty sure she's never left town in her life. He could tell her things about Europe, about Japan, about New York. Suddenly he feels the urge to take her away from all these lies and darkness. But those are pretty sentiments better left to leading actors in a studio picture. He's the worse-for-wear loser trapped in this B-movie struggle. He doesn't believe in fate, but he does believe in central casting.

"I don't know," he confesses, his thoughts never go further than the both of them driving out to the desert. "Anywhere. Tahiti. I hear it's a magical place."

But Skye is working, going through the bunch of documents on her desk, compiling the case against the LAPD, against Raina, against Alexander Pierce. Stupid girl who never learns, and never stops. Stupid, brave girl.

"Sounds good," she says, distracted. "But imagine how much garbage we'd have to face when we came back."

"Who said anything about coming back?"

She looks up from what she is doing.

"Quitting LA for good? Is that even _allowed_?"

"Why not?"

You never quit LA, not until LA quits you and by that time you'll be dead.

"What is wrong with you?" she asks, impatient.

"Don't you ever think about stopping? You are young and this is getting too dangerous, you don't have to do this. This is pitch black and void of humanity territory."

"I'm not afraid of them. And I'm not afraid of the dark."

He walks to the couch, done with looking at the identical flats across the street, the identical neglect on their fronts and fire escapes, the identical dark corners and anodine lives reeking of disappointment and quiet misery. Skye notices his mood and goes to him, taking a seat on the coffee table, legs between his knees. Up close he can see the rainbowed monstruosity that is the bruise on her left cheek, green and yellow and lilac and brown. She looks rough. 

She doesn't need to ask him what's wrong, she just has to look at him like that.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean it. I'm just tired," he says. "It's not nice seeing you get hurt. I'm desperate not to witness that again."

She shrugs, doesn't seem too preoccupied by it, now that the worst has passed.

"We're alive," she says matter-of-factly. "And we are pretty much in one piece. And we're together, so. We have that advantage over the bad guys, and it's a huge one, the way I see it. They don't have you, and they don't have me."

Coulson thinks about what that means.

When did Skye declare war on the whole world?

When did he?

He doesn't have any other option but to agree.

"No, they don't."

 

**[x]**

The manhunt for Mike Peterson continues south of Jefferson.

Skye knows where he is holding up, of course. And she would tell Coulson if he asked, but he doesn't. The papers call him cop killer and that's like signing his death sentence. Skye doesn't want to live in a world where an innocent man like Mike Peterson takes the fall all the way to the gas chamber. She knows she is no Bogart but she is going to take her detective license and her thin winter coat and she is going to make sure that doesn't happen.

Not everything is bad news (or it is, but in subtly different ways): she manages to get a copy of Hand's autopsy. LA's last honest croaker, a woman called Simmons, get it for her.

When she skims over the thing she realizes what it means immediately. She almost doesn't want to show it to Coulson. He's received enough blows lately.

"Point blank?"

"That means..." she prays he finishes the sentence for her, like he usually does.

"Hand knew her murderer. Well enough to let him get so close."

".38? Does it ring any–?"

"It does." Coulson puts his face in his hands. He recovers soon, gritting his teeth (Skye can almost _hear_ it) and looking at her with resolution. He's incredibly resilient.

This time Skye will say it, so he doesn't have to. " _Garrett_."

 

**[x]**

"Garrett was never my friend," he says, feeling the need to explain himself to Skye. "I don't mean to be – all this hindsight. But we were partners for a while. And we came from the same place."

"You were together in the Pacific," Skye fills in. He hasn't told her much, but he has told her enough that she and her quick-wittedness, her excruciatingly good aim, that head of hers always working to solve the puzzle, it all made it very easy for Skye to make a fine guess of what his time in the war had been like. He had said _Guadalcanal_ and this uneducated orphaned girl had looked into his eyes as if she knew exactly what had happened there, as if she had been by his side all those years ago.

"He wasn't really my friend so why do I feel so betrayed?"

"Because you're still a cop. Or you think you are."

"I don't want to be. I swear. But I joined the force at nineteen. If I'm not a cop, I'm nothing."

She takes his head in her hands, looking into his eyes.

"You're not nothing."

She slides her tongue into his mouth.

The shock is such – even though her movements were purposedly slow – that Coulson doesn't stop her immediately.

He doesn't stop her at all.

She pulls away and the kiss is only the briefest of kisses, but it heralds ruin anyway. He thought he had been more careful than this.

"Why did you do that?" he asks.

Skye thinks he is flirting. It's an honest question. 

"Kiss you? Why, you're a knockout, dear."

She moves to kiss him again but he stops her. The grip on her wrists stronger than it needs to be, like he couldn't allow an inch closer. The city is quiet for once in its fucking life, no cars outside, so all he can hear is his own heart, as if he needed further proof the bullet didn't stop it.

"Skye... The devil may have my number but I'm not going to hell yet."

She turns his words over in her head. Her face goes from fleeting hope to hurt to annoyance. Not annoyance, annoyance Coulson has seen before. This is new. There's heat, like real rage. She takes her hands off him, though, and that's a start.

"Go screw yourself, Coulson."

Yes, he can definitely go do that. He just has.

 

**[x]**

The next body hits close home and for a moment she forgets she is supposed to be angry at Coulson. 

" _I_ asked for his help. I gave him all of our documents. He was doing me a favor. He had nothing to do with this. It was me and my big mouth that put him in danger."

She has lost people before, of course, she's a private dick, but she had not gotten anyone killed before. Koenig was a friend – he touched up her first typo-ridden columns on the scam that was red-baiting, back when she came to work for his paper. She feels like she has lost part of her own history now that he's gone.

Coulson moves to touch her, some kind of meaningless comforting gesture full of guilt. Skye doesn't want that crap. She moves away further. His hand hangs in the air for a moment, between their bodies, and he has a hurt look on his face. Good. Tomorrow she will feel bad about that face of his. Today she can be cruel like a gal from the movies, one of those with the cold heart who are too wise to fall for the traps of men. 

"The police has the crime scene sealed," she tells him, because he still is her partner after all.

"Foul play?"

His question is superfluous, of course. She learned this very early on, before the agency, before the newspaper. She learned it some time between the nuns and walking down the Strip trying to catch a break. There's only foul play in this town, foul murder.

"Most foul," she says.

 

**[x]**

He's too old to end up with the bracelets on and thrown into a cell for the night.

"How dumb are you?" Sergeant Ward asks him, sitting safely on the right side of the bars, looking down on Coulson. His tone, his smirk. No wonder he and Garrett are birds of a feather. "Do you want to get it for a fat reporter?"

He considers the possibility that they are indeed thinking of bumping him. No way, not yet. Too many variables. Koenig's papers weren't there. They have to find out what Coulson knows first. And there's always his friendship with Chief Hill to consider – he likes to play the lone cowboy game but he knows that tenuous connection has saved his neck more than once.

Hours later and there's a shift change, thank god, he wouldn't have wanted Ward and Skye to cross paths when she came to bail him out. He hadn't thought about that before acting. Cruel, stupid Phil.

"You went to Koenig's office by yourself?" Skye shakes her head. "That's not the job of an assistant."

"I see I have been demoted. I though we were both boss."

"Don't push your luck, cat. You're on probation. You don't deserve to be anyone's boss right now."

And he agrees. He can see how angry she still is with him but at least they are talking. Koenig was her friend from her paper years, in a way Coulson was trying to make it up to her. He tells her what he knows: either Ward already has the files or Koenig hid them somewhere else, somewhere outside his flat.

Skye takes it in but if she has a theory (and if Coulson knows her she already has one) she is going to keep it to herself at least.

It's only when they walk out of the station that he realizes he left his coat inside.

LA's earliest possible morning sings with dew, cold and pitiless like absolution.

 

 

**part three: all you need is a girl and a gun**

 

Days later a packet arrives for them in the mail.

"Koenig taught me a couple of tricks," Skye says, fond and sad. "I should have guessed he was not going to let the cops get their hands on this."

Coulson stares at the pile of documents they have gathered for weeks. For these they are risking their necks, other body parts too. There are documents Skye hasn't seen before, discoveries Koenig must have made on his own.

"What do we do with this?" Coulson asks. "These are dangerous secrets. They won't stop killing to get them."

"I think we should use the same trick. Get it away from here. Send it somewhere else."

"Send it to someone else? Who?"

Skye grins and she thinks she hasn't done this in ages, they haven't done this in ages, figure things out, solving the puzzle together.

"I need your help with that, Coulson. We'll send it to someone who can do something about it."

 

**[x]**

On one hand he might be a fool for coming to Garrett alone.

On the other hand: he already knows he is a fool.

"Akela told me about the special force," he says.

Garrett takes the bait. "I think the press called us Gangster Squad. Haven't you read the papers? We were doing a service to the city."

"You weren't doing any service. You were working on your own, private kill list. Who's on that list, John? What is it for? Who are you instructed to kill?"

"Everyone," Garrett says, cold as a man can be.

"What do you mean, _everyone_?"

"Everyone who isn't us. Everyone who stands in the way."

Something in Garrett's eyes. Like madness, but more focused, more dangerous – like staring at the sun for too long. He looks like the man who stood besides Coulson when enemy fire rained on them like divine justice. He wonders if Garrett was lying then already, how many things about him are fake, not just his smile.

"That easy?" Coulson asks.

"That easy."

"You were never one for complicated plans, I remember."

"You haven't asked if you are on that list. You are on that list."

"I imagine but... The truth is, you can't kill me. You still haven't found that file. Koenig's documents. The real autopsy. The construction permits. The freeway project. You can't kill me because you don't know what my death will trigger."

Garrett walks up to him, towering him with his height. Coulson is not afraid for himself but suddenly he afraid of something else, before the other man opens his mouth.

"But I can do a lot better than kill you. Let's say my boy Grant pays a visit to your lovely partner." Coulson grits his teeth, not giving him the satisfaction of – "Don't look at me like that, Phil. If you are looking for someone to blame when you end up having to hold that girl in your arms while she bleeds to death... just take a good look at yourself. We'll get that file from you, one way or another."

"I will find a way to prove everything, you must know that. You're going away for a long, long time."

He'd like to believe he got the last word in, like the suave detectives in the novels he can never imitate, but the truth ihe can remember. He can only remember being in a rush to go home.

 

**[x]**

The last thing Skye is expecting, at this particular conjucture in her life, when Coulson comes into the office is the way he walks up to her and wraps his arms around her like he's not thinking to clearly about it. She can feel his hands clutch at her back, twisting into her clothes.

"Are you okay?" he asks, a hoarse whisper against her ear.

"Yes, of course. What the hell is wrong with you?"

She doesn't get it. She doesn't get him. At a time she had thought he had wanted a partner in her, a real partner. Then he rejected her without a second thought. And now he is holding on to her like she is something precious. It's enough to turn even a sane girl like Skye crazy.

The only thing for a sane girl to do is disentangle herself from the embrace, gentle but firm.

He steps back, looking at her in confusion. She wants to tell him she's not rejecting him, not like he did with her. She just needs to step back a moment here.

"Where do you come from?" she asks.

He seems like he's about to answer, begins to form a word or a name with his mouth. But he stops himself, pushing it down.

"No one came by the office this afternoon?" he asks instead. "Why weren't you picking up the phone?"

"I was at Mel's all afternoon, paying our tab and sipping Joe while I studied all this property bylaws. By the way, you're welcome. Did you know Alexander Pierce made his fortune especulating with water?"

"That doesn't matter right now."

"Yes, it does, if we are going to build a case against him, if we are going to send these files to –"

She sees his face. All the frustration of the last couple of weeks drains from her instantly.

"You were worried," she realizes.

"Please tell me you didn't go out without a piece on you."

"Of course not. I've been packing heat every day since Sergeant Ward threw me to the wolves."

She shows him her pistol, neatly tucked under her coat. Coulson draws an endless breath. His hands go up to Skye's hair, fingers tangling messily into it.

"Skye, look at me. You were wrong. I am nothing, I'm a middle aged ex-cop with no future and not much of a past to speak of either, I'm a chump. And I can't protect you. But you can protect yourself."

She grabs his hands and carefully pushes them away .

"I will be fine," she doesn't want to be too harsh, but harsh enough that he'll be convinced. What are they doing? they are partners. They are meant to be protecting each other. "What about you? Can _you_ protect yourself?"

He draws short, difficult breaths. He looks like he could use a good night's sleep, and his suit could do with a bit of ironing. She never thought she'd say that.

"I don't think I'm the one who will get hurt," he tells her.

 

**[x]**

What do you know? She is not the one who gets hurt.

 

**[x]**

She knocks on the door, impatience bordering on desperation but this is not the time to care about her image. She is not here as Skye, courageous private dick, or even as Skye, reckless ex-criminal, she's here as someone else, she's here as her partner's partner.

She comes here without her coat or her hat, but she is still holding a pistol very close to her body, just as he taught her. The door creaks open.

"Mike? Please don't close the door."

He doesn't, but only because Skye puts her body between the door and its frame.

"Are you trying to get me killed?"

"Please, you have to listen to me."

"No. How did you find me? If you found me... how far behind the cops are?"

"Very, very far behind, I promise you, no one has followed me," she says. She wills herself to remain calm long enough to give him an explanation. "I will protect you, but you have to help me now, _right now_."

If she is going to have to beg that's also fine with her.

"Help you? I can't help a cockroach from here. If you want me to testify–"

"I don't care. I don't care about all that right now. All I care about is Coulson – they took him."

There's no need to specify who _they_ are. They are anyone who isn't them. 

Mike stops. He knows Coulson had refused to believe he was guilty from day one, had helped Skye erase the trace of any information the cops might have on him, trying to buy him some time through tenuous anonimity. She knows Mike respects the man. And respect is an expensive commodity in this cheap city.

"Why would they take Coulson?"

"I don't know. Maybe they got tired of waiting around, knowing there's a file that connects LA's next mayor with grand scale corruption in the Police Department, with the mafia."

Saying it out loud not only sound ridiculous but a lot more dangerous than they have been pretending. Skye has a sudden thought, cutting into her: _they are going to kill Coulson_. They are going to kill us all.

None of us is getting out of this place alive.

"I want to help you," Mike says. She can see the genuine expression of frustration, the way his jaw is set. "But I can't go anywhere."

"No, I know. But you are the only one we know who has worked for Raina, for Quinn before he went away. Maybe there's something you haven't told – any detail. Anything that might help me find Coulson."

She knows this is hopeless but she's been everywhere today. She's walked the whole city in search of any clue. She's clutching at straws because right now it's the only way she can grasp at her sanity. She has always thought she was quick, but not quick enough for this. The past day and a half she has been relieving every moment she has spent with Coulson, memories superimposing on reality until she can't see straight. The stupid son of a bitch has done this to her but she is willing to forgive him – like she has forgiven everything before, like _he_ has forgiven her whenever it was her turn to botch a job – if only he could be found.

"Wait," Mike says all of the sudden. "I remember one thing. When Raina recruited me, that's around the time Quinn's people started getting crossed off."

"What? What is it?"

"Oranges."

" _Oranges_?"

 

**[x]**

The smell of oranges is overwhelming. Pungent. He likes that word. Where is he? He figures outside town, beyond the valley. The land Alexander Pierce was trying to buy. Another piece of the empire. He wonders if Pierce is doing the same right now in his visit to Washington, bulk-buying the whole city. Why not the world? It's easier than conquering it, swifter than murder. Jesus, he's beginning to see why Skye hates capitalism so much. Or it might be he received a pretty bad blow to the head.

He understands many things when he comes around and he sees Raina, sitting in front of him on a straw chair. He's actually good at this. Or used to be. Garrett, Quinn, Raina. The universe works in threes. Garrett, Raina, Pierce. Victoria Hand meeting with Garrett somewhere private. Victoria Hand smelling a rat but coming to the only person she shouldn't have. Garrett pushing for Chief of Police. Ward pushing for Lieutenant. Raina doing the same things Quinn was willing to do, but faster and cheaper. Raina taking out her rivals.

"You know why nobody investigated your shooting?" she asks, voice sweet like venom.

"I'm trying to figure that one out for myself. Don't ruin it for me."

He tests the strength of the ropes she tied him with. She did a good job. She's no idiot. Tonight Phil Coulson is inclined to think Raina is the smartest person among them all. After all he might be figuring things out but he is the only one of the two of them currently tied to a chair in basement. She probably deseves to win.

"They didn't investigate because nobody gave a damn, Detective Coulson," she offers.

"If police procedure was dictated by someone giving a damn or not the prisons would be empty."

"Oh please. Your friends down in Wilshire? Do you honestly believe your name carries any weight? Do you think the force still cares if you live or die?"

"No. I was never that naive."

"Your odds are not much better now. If you end up in a ditch tomorrow... do you think anyone is going to care?"

Something about the question compels him to confront it with honesty. 

"Yes." Raina arches an eyebrow. "I'm exactly that naive."

She gets closer, touching her hand to his cheek, caressing the bruise she herself put there. Coulson winces. "Come on, Coulson. If you tell us where the documents are, we'll take good care of you."

"Who's we? Garrett? I've seen Garrett take care of his friends. I'm good."

The woman's eyes darken – now she is frightening, now she is alien and unfamiliar, all sharp edges and murderous intent. Coulson calculates the odds. He has never been a gambling man, but a lot has changed. He's counting on one ace up the sleeve and _that_ is being naive.

He almost feels confident in his plan, in his renewed idealism, but then he sees the knife in her hand.

 

**[x]**

"Well, now, let's not get dramatic," Raina says, a dignified tilt of the head as she stares into the barrel of a gun. 

Skye's gun.

"Where's Coulson?"

Raina stays in the half shadows, face in darkness, but her beautiful red flower dress eerily illuminated by moonlight. She looks like the painting of a great catastrophe.

"I thought we could talk about other things first," she says. "More interesting things."

"I don't think so. Where's Coulson?"

"You have to understand. Phil Coulson bought this ticket a long time ago. Garrett wants to make an example. And let's face it, there are some personal feelings there. So why don't you spare your poor partner the torture and tell us where the files are. I promise I'll make it quick and painless for him."

"I'm sorry to be the person to use the cliche here but... I'm afraid you'll have to kill me."

"That would be unfortunate. And not very professional of me. Garrett has other plans for you. I have other plans. We like you."

"You'd better cancel those plans, sister."

"Don't you want to hear what we have to offer to a girl _like you_?" she says. Against all of her being Skye finds herself frightened by those two words. "Yes, a girl like you, Skye. Don't you want to know what happened to your parents?"

There's a moment – almost too long – of silence and then Skye's laughter fills the villa.

"That's your brilliant plan? Do you think I'd give up Coulson for information about my parents? You guys must be really dumb."

Raina comes out of the shadows, stepping into the center of the room in an obviously angry gesture. Skye considers this a triumph, even if Raina's hollow eyes, when painted by hatred, are going to haunt her for a while.

But then Skye notices the blood on Raina's left hand.

She aims at her head again and cocks the pistol.

" _Where_ is _Coulson_?"

The woman smiles on, Skye is sure she would smile her way into the gallows. "We both know you are not going to shoot."

"You're right. I'm not." She chews the words like a curse.

She hits Raina's face, her fingers curled around the butt of the pistol. Raina falls to the floor, dead weight with a loud thud noise, the fresh cut on her cheek ruining the expensive carpet, dripping blood. Skye looks at her unconscious frame, petrified for a moment – she has never been this violent. She kneels to check the woman is okay.

Coulson. She remembers. _Coulson_.

"I was convinced you were already scratching my name from our door," he says when she finds him in the basement and as she works the knots on the rope, not looking at his wounds just yet because first things come first and the room smells of copper.

"Raina," she tells him, still putting all the pieces together in her mind, looking up at him (she's undoing the rope around his feet), needing him to follow the reasoning with her.

"And Garrett. And Ward. And whoever else is there in Wilshire following Garrett's orders."

"They betrayed Quinn."

"They wanted the city for themselves. I don't think they intended to share it with Pierce." He takes a moment. "Raina stabbed me."

Her eyes go very wide. _Stabbed_. He understands all the blood on his shirt now. They have to get out of here.

"Raina is upstairs," she says. "Knocked out."

"Good. We'll take the rope. Tie her up."

"Coulson." She looks into his eyes. She doesn't know how to ask. "Did you tell her what we did with the files?"

His face looks so battered and he looks so tired just by listening to the question. He shakes his head. Skye tries not to think about how pale he looks. She has to get him to a hospital and soon. All this work to get here, to get to him, it can't all be a waste. He can't bleed to death and render everything worthless. 

She has to save him.

"I'll call Hill," Coulson is saying. "We can trust her. She'll send someone."

"We have to get you to a hospital," she argues, which surprises them both when the words are out there, and it means this is a serious situation she's talking about. They are not ones for visiting a croaker, they are too used to patch each other up for that. But Skye doesn't know what she could do with a stab wound so deep, with that much blood, with a Coulson this pale.

For once in his sorry life Coulson doesn't argue with her: "Okay. I'll call and then you get me to a hospital."

 

**[x]**

Mulholland is deserted at this hour except for the couple of silent and lonely bikers passing them by, but still he doesn't feel like they are going to be safe anytime soon. He wonders if ever. Maybe you don't get that, not in this city, you don't get to feel safe. Somebody almost stabbed him to death tonight so maybe a bit of pessimisim is in order, he reasons.

He can feel a headache coming and for the love of god this is the _third_ time in his life he is bleeding to death. It feels bizarrely alike, dying in some god forsaken tropical battlefield, or in a dark LA alleway, or in the passenger's seat of a stolen car.

With a difference.

The difference is this time he is not alone.

"I couldn't pull the trigger," Skye says, looking sideways at him when he knows she should be looking at the road. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he tells her. "You know I prefer my villains behind bars rather than underground."

He wonders where she stole the car. He wants to hear the story. He wants to hear her talk. Dying thoughts are really inconvenient.

She speeds down the hills and Coulson would be worried if it wasn't for the gaping hole below his ribs.

"You drive like a maniac, boss," he tells her, fondly.

"I've seen you _drive_. This is safety. Plus we have to get you to a hospital and soon."

He watches as she concentrates on the road. There's something burning in her eyes, a challenge like nothing he has seen before. People in this city are right: this girl is rough. Rough like a diamond.

"Why are you looking at me like that, pal?" she asks, catching his expression with the corner of her eye.

His head feels dizzy and he's angry at himself. This is not how the story was supposed to go. This city never makes room for moments like this.

"Because I guess I'm in love with you," he says, gritting his teeth.

She quirks an eyebrow at his tone. "You don't have to sound so bummed out about it."

"I don't think our insurance covers it."

"I hate to break it to you, _boss_ , but I don't think we have any insurance at all."

"Then I'll try not to bleed to death all over the seats. We can't afford to dry-clean the leather."

"That's a good idea," she says, biting her lower lip, biting anything that betrays the terror she is in. "Just try not to bleed to death."

 

**[x]**

It's past three in the morning when they get out of the hospital. It doesn't mean it's quiet, or the streets are deserted. Sleep is not among the priorities of the Angelenos, specially on the wrong side of the tracks. They were all wrong sides.

She barely remembers anything of the car journey to town, much less of the time she spends waiting for the doctors to tell her something. Coulson doesn't have to stay the night, which is good. She had to ditch the car, just in case, which is not so good because now they have to walk home, Coulson's arm around her shoulders for support and she doesn't really understand how stubborn they both have to be to make it home but then again she doesn't remember much of that journey either.

She makes him sit on the couch. The glass of scotch is not far behind.

"Deja vu," Skye says, touching her fingers to take a good look at the cut above his right eye, the one that looks uglier than the rest.

He dozzes off for a minute or two.

 

**[x]**

He doesn't know how long they have stayed like this, not saying anything.

He is still holding his drink, even though he's pretty sure he's drifted off a couple of times. He remembers his military training, when he has to learn how to sleep while standing. Maybe this is like that.

Skye is sitting by his side and looking at him as if he might disappear if she even blinks.

This city, their lives, it has all been built on lies but he decides she deserves the truth, even if only tonight.

"What I said to you in the car..."

He can see the movements of her throat as she swallows before putting on a bright smile.

"Hey, don't sweat it," she says. "You probably thought you were dying. I won't hold it againt you."

He leaves the glass on the little coffee table.

"But I want you to hold it against me."

"What?"

He grabs her by the back of the neck and pulls her against his mouth, kissing her rough and fast and desperate, like they are approaching the last reel of the film and he doesn't want anything to end. Not with her. Ending are no good with Skye. His tongue is pitiless against hers and she lets out a surprised moan, making Coulson dizzier than blood loss. There are things in this town way more dangerous than knives. There is love.

"You made me feel like a fool," she says when she pulls away, still a bit hurt and he doesn't blame her.

"I am the fool."

"Yes, Phil, yes, you are."

He smiles. He smiles at her but he realizes he did cause her pain. "I don't expect you to forgive me for that. I just – "

She kisses him. She seems more sure about it than he was, but that has always been the case. She twists one careful hand into the collar of his shirt. He thinks vaguely about how he has to throw these blood-stained clothes away. But then Skye sighs against his mouth, in relief if nothing else. 

She climbs on to him, knees each side of him, straddling him against the couch. For once the light of the moon through their blinds, that very LA phenomenon, doesn't look dirty and threatening. It lights Skye from behind like a movie close-up. But their clothes are blood-stained and they are poor and honest and the iconography of this is all wrong. There's no femme fatale, there's no romantic hero. They can't even make a living as detectives. He's not deaf, he's heard the rumors. He knows how many people would say I told you so. Two lonely souls holed up in a detective's office all day – what was he expecting to happen? _It's Skye_ – what was he expecting to happen?

He just wishes his whole body wasn't aching, that the wound on his side wasn't a gaping hole of pain extending to every one of his nerve endings. He wishes for better circumstances, but people like him, people like her, they don't get much choice. They'd better get what they can. They'd better get what they _want_. He concentrates on Skye instead, not his injuries. He concentrates on the sweet weight on her on his body, the shape of her pressed up against him, pining him to the back of the couch, the shape of her breasts, the way her shoulder fit perfectly into his hand when he reaches to touch it.

He grabs her thighs, digging his fingertips into them.

"Hey, hey," she protests, laughter ringing in her words. "Be careful. Do you know for how much silk stockings go these days?"

"You are all romance," he protests in turn, but he is smiling.

"I wasn't the one who needed to think about this for three damned weeks," she points out, kissing his temple gently, her brown hair falling all over Coulson's face. She smells so familiar and yes, he feels guilty for making her wait, and not just three weeks.

"Okay, pal, I'll be careful with your stockings if you are careful with my wounds."

"You got a deal," she tells him, dipping her head to lick at the base of his jaw.

Her hands are everywhere, fast; at the buckle of his belt, pulling the hem of his shirt, running along the length of his arms. She has more enthusiasm than finesse right now but then again she's never been one for finesse. Coulson takes it all in, as it comes, as she is. He can hardly follow her pace but he is willing to try. She is kissing him like she does everything – like she only gets once chance to do it. She opens his shirt and kisses the shape of his scar, right over his heart. He shouldn't have survived that, he knows that. She kisses the last in a long string of scars and for the first time in ten years he is glad to be alive. His hands are everywhere too; rolling her skirt above her waist, pushing her underwear to one side, grasping her hips until she sinks. Coulson pulls at her hair, firm but careful, anchoring her when she moves on top of him and he inside of her. The cheap leather of the couch creaks beneath them and Los Angeles is silent for the second time in Coulson's memory. There it is, the heartbeat. He didn't imagine it. And this time he can hear Skye's as well.

 

 

**[x]**

"Don't bleed to death on the couch, either," she says.

She can't see him – her back is pressed against his chest and his arm wrapped around her center, a safety measure between her and a possible fall to the floor, the couch obviously not meant to accommodate two people in this way. She can't see him but she can feel the smile in the way he presses his mouth against the nape of her neck. Skye can still smell a faint scent of coppery death on his body and she grabs at his arm, forcing him to hold her closer.

"Yes," he says. "I promise not to bleed to death."

 

**[x]**

He wakes up feeling the absence of warmth, a warmth he's pretty sure has been with him all night, has been here until a few moments ago. His body displays the traces of that warmth with irrefutable evidence. Coulson groans before waking up completely, ready to accept the fact that the girl in her arms is gone, and probably already having second thoughts about last night.

But when he wakes up Skye is there, sitting on the coffee table staring down at him, and with the most Skye-like expression he's ever seen her. As if what they did last night was perfectly natural and sane.

"Take a look at this," she says, no prologue, and she shoves a newspaper in his face.

"A Washington paper?"

He is not sure where she got it but that must remain a story for some other day.

"Rogers has blown the whole thing open. A veritable conspiracy, they are calling it. Policemen and ex-policemen building a crime empire. Pierce, Sitwell, a couple of very influental congressmen."

"Jesus."

The headlines are a mangled mess of shock and conjeture but the salient points remain: Pierce arrested for conspiracy, all his L.A. hopes gone in a puff of very public smoke. Murder charges, drug dealing charges, embezzling charges. Connections in half the major cities of the country. A planned coup d'etat to overtake organized crime, with designs on the government itself. Jesus, Coulson repeats. He skims over the list of possible co-conspiratos. Yes, he recognizes a lot of them. Ex-colleagues, friends. People he thought were straight as they came. No better way of making feel older.

This is definitely bigger than he had imagined. He had been so naive. He had only wanted to clean up his old precint, nothing more.

Skye doesn't seem that surprised by the turn of events.

"They've got Pierce," she repeats.

"And we've got Garrett." Yes, and as of last night Maria Hill's got Raina and it's all connected.

"Seems like your Russian spy got our package."

He smiles back at her. "Seems like she did."

The phone rings. A bit too loud for his taste. Skye sees the face he makes and she chuckles. She's gracious enough to pass him the phone.

He answers on instinct, not really following his own conversation too well.

"Yes? Oh god, Maria what time is it? I was tortured last night. I was _stabbed_. One might suppose that entitles a man to –... Yes, I read it on the paper. Skye brought it... Yes, she's okay. Yes, I'm fine too, thanks for asking. No, I _didn't_ die during the night... See you in a couple of hours."

He hangs up. Skye looks at him with very wide eyes.

She grabs the blanket and pulls it off him.

"Come on, let's get dressed, let's go down to your precinct. There's no way we are not going to do the honors."

 

**[x]**

Everybody knows about the flat upstairs from their office, the one they share, but they don't _share_.

Everybody said it was just asking for trouble.

Well, Skye never minded a little bit of trouble.

Coulson grabs her hips as she finishes brushing her teeth in their tiny bathroom. She is getting all cleaned and dolled up. They should be giving them medals of honor, anyway. Coulson already has a medal of honor, from the war, but she has never seen it. She notices he hasn't let go off her hips. He looks like he is about to kiss her right here, in their shared bathroom, but he doesn't.

"What?" she asks.

"I woke up and I thought you had left," he says, simply.

"I'll make sure that doesn't happen again," she says, throwing her arms around his neck. "Got to take good care of my loyal assistant."

"Have I been demoted again?"

"Well, you did get yourself kidnapped and I had to come rescue you. That doesn't happen to leading men."

His lips quirk upwards slightly. 

"I'm okay with not being a leading man." He kisses her. She can still taste the toothpaste on herself and last night on his mouth. The combination is dizzingly domestic and raw. "Are you sure you know what you are getting into?"

"Oh, doll," she teases him, holding on even tighter, hands clasped behind to his neck. "I always knew."

 

**[x]**

The happy parade they were expecting isn't such.

He is putting a friend in jail, after all, so soon after having buried another.

At least now Mike Peterson can walk free again.

There are moments in which he can't think of Garrett as anything other than the soldier riding on that damned ship with him, sitting by his side in 1943. He was never his friend, he wasn't lying when he said that, but he isn't mourning Garrett the man, he is mourning an idea, he's mourning a part of his own life, a good chunk of meat and blood and time he spent under lies and not orders.

"Just in time," Maria Hill tells him "We already locked Ward downstairs."

He looks sideways at Skye. The enthusiasm of this morning is gone. She doesn't look like she believes they should get a medal. She looks a bit like she is going to throw up.

Even in handcuffs, with what they know now about him (how many more bodies buried under the shadows, the scent a mixture of oranges and blood – he anticipates the police will be digging for days), Garrett is an imposing figure. He doesn't fight the men dragging him across the station and he doesn't flinch when Coulson walks up to him, face to face.

"Looking good, John. Pity we have to meet in these circusmtances."

Here there is again, John Garrett's smirk, something always off about it. 

"You think this is over?" he tells Coulson. "This is never over. Guys like me, we always come back. Cut one head and two more will grow. Guys like you, Phil? And that young partner of yours? You always end up with nothing."

He walks out of there, his old precinct, his old life.

The sun hurts his eyes. 

He should feel triumphant. Instead he just wants to get back to work. It's an odd feeling for an ending. He just wants to go on.

Coulson doesn't know how long he stands like that, pathetic in the sidewalk, before he notices Skye is by his side.

"Hey." He turns to her. "You know he's wrong. Right? We're not going to end up with nothing."

"Mm uh."

He's not convinced at all.

The odds stacked against them are probably too many. They always have been.

He thinks about the rent due in a week that they can't pay, he thinks about phone bills and the diner tab piling up again.

He thinks about Skye, and her communist connections, the socialist meetings she and her old newsies friends still attend. He thinks about Skye, absolutely vulnerable in a world that hates everything she represents. He thinks about Hill's advice now that he is willing to listen to it, about the storm that's going to come.

He thinks about the murder case of Skye's parents and how he hasn't been able to find out not even one thing for her. Not one little thing, since the day they met.

He thinks about what the damn hell is he doing, fifty-one and pretending there are such things at second chances for the likes of him, the likes of her. Skye deserves better than him but she is never going to get better. She is never going to get anything at all.

Then he feels her hand casually slipping into his, entwinning their fingers together. Her grip is strong.

He stops thinking about phone bills.

He stops thinking about anything, really.

"Wanna spend our last hard-won bucks on a big steak for lunch, to celebrate?" she asks. The question is much more loaded than that, much more loaded than any gun he's ever held in his hand. "We can even order dessert."

Then he remembers Skye doesn't do fatalistic.

She would make a horrible film noir character, he thinks.

"Yes," he says.

He feels like he should say something more than that, but he also feels he's never going to get more accurate with her than a simple _yes_. She starts first towards the streets, taking the whole city in her stride. He follows, could follow blindly, because his hand is still clutched tightly by hers. She walks, he follows, until he catches up with her.

Maybe there is a chance they – 

The city is pitiless, rancid, compromised. It will eat you alive and spit you out bone by broken bone. The city sings its siren's song, it's after your soul, but once in a while, there are those who refuse to listen. 

They walk away from the station, towards La Brea and beyond, in whole gear, coats and hats and concealed guns and holding hands and in days like today and for people like them, for a forgotten ex-cop and a lonely orphan girl, Los Angeles can be beautiful too.


End file.
